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Tag: Office

I am wondering to search those companies, production units, offices and factories where people are working under traditional or industrial mind approach. Generations have leg
behind The Agricultural Age and The Hunter/Gatherer Age long time ago. However, Industrial age mindset is still influenced to the global workforce.

Let me define you quickly what is Industrial age mindset is:

Industrial mindset is a formal working system to run working people and machines together under rules, efficiency & controlling trigger hold by an authority called Boss/Director/Manager.

It gives you vision to use people instead of machines and manage machines instead of people. Workers can be considered as your machines to take orders to have production or give services. Employees should not have courage to comment on any mechanism on the procedures and layout of the department. Everything is fixed. They are not allowed to use their own methods to get desired results. They do what they are told, not to participate in any development and policy matter.

This chronic problem under industrial system is to make The Boss always happy. Every worker has to get Boss blessings to go head in their everyday job responsibilities or career growth. Such Boss or leader can fire any employee anytime and that leader does make all decisions because he knows best of all. Best performance of worker or employee is calculated based on Manager’s personal likeness, not with any assessment criteria.

I am Boss

Production or service delivery capacity is not customer oriented under such environment. Today, where business market is extremely customer oriented, under industrial mind policy structure, it is not primarily or even secondarily priority of the company. Sales or Service provider staff and marketing departments are full of incompetent people with very casual and traditional approach. Customers are their greedy focus for selling products and earn money just, not for serving people and the society with mission or contribution.

One of greatest tragedy of industrial working system that you will not have any access to the resources to know more, in fact there is not space of any resources in the system. Information is blocked here, sorry. You do not need to know anything else except you are told or you observe here. If it is really necessary to find new solution or way, just butter to Boss and try to flatter him until he permit to allow you to say what feel. If this new productive idea increase Boss’s power over the system, it is okay to discuss, otherwise absolutely NOT.

Low Trust is the fundamental spirit of this system because of egoistic or authoritative environment. Since, everybody is not working to strengthen the system rather to say YES BOSS, communication within worker is not trustable. Employees, either, will backbite to each other because they are not raised as team members. Employees seek to know weaknesses of other to exploit them. This low-trust does lie all the time because everything is secretive and everyone does work under No-Shared-Vision or No-Shared-Values. Their conscience is dead or at least sleeping. Everybody is victim as they pull each other legs. Political games and hidden agendas are in practice.

Organisational structurewise such companies have no or weak Human Resource policies & procedures, In fact there is no such organised HR department or section, can not be imagined. Employees in their clerical and administrative offices are recruited not based on qualification, backgrounds and talents but on references and without merit. Yes, such companies, in huge proportion, exit, everywhere, even in this age of media freedom, skills & talent and informational world.

Like machines, people are considered to produce or work more with high-efficiency because they will be following unchangeable bunch of rules set by Boss. They control people like machines. Psychological approach of this Boss is to fulfill very basic need of employee and ignore other needs such as emotional or social, mental and spiritual. Controlling people is their clever art and they are proud of it. They consider institutions and companies like their personal possession. In this situation, there is no concept of formal office meetings because everything is pre-prescribed and already decided. No meeting is needed.

Only motivation for employees to do their jobs is to get their weekly or monthly wages and nothing, more important is that they are on the job, at least for them and their family survival as they can see high percentage of unemployment in the city. This system plays with needs of survival and financial security of the workers and their families. Hence, neither they leave system not system leave them. On other way tricky BOSS or MANAGER has firmly believe on JACK-ASS THEORY under which you adopt policy of “Carrot and Stick”, you give carrot and then stick to work , carrot and then stick to work and it goes on.

This misaligned system at workplace leads to inter-departmenal rivalry due to ambiguous vision of job position or about goals of the roles. BOSS or MANAGER does not acknowledge your talent or skills. That Manager does seem bad Coach and she disempowers employees. Manager has set fix rules and work procedures and you have to follow these rule if you want to sustain in this system. Employees become bore from their jobs and now they want to escape because they are angry and have a lot of fears. Any emerging people working under this system does lose their focus and confidence on their professional goals and become part of miserable life. Resign is the only hope to way out.

Because this system is based on straitjacket potential, it is developed with managing machines and using minds, there will be big gaps between operational procedures within departments. All are misaligned. One set rule will be contradicted with other in similar situations. You can see clear hypocrisies within people because they are codependent, workers know weak points of other.

Directors and Managers with narrow minds do not believe on trainings and professional development. They never convinced to invest money to provide training to develop employees for competencies, increasing productivity and learning new things. They have misconception that human mind cannot change. They think that they do not need to waste money and time to empower staff and workers. They see the world as They see themselves i.e. unchangeable.

It is misconception of such industrial Leaders that by controlling machines and people at workplace they would design a system where you can generate a lot of production and wealth that increase financial profits. In real, it is not for power or discipline of the system but for higher management who make monies and their personal bank accounts. If we visit most of production houses, factories and such companies, we can see the huge difference between personal social status of the final decision makers and workers. In contrast with economic and social conditions of those employees who work even 10-12 hours per day like machines without entertainment and freedom. In England, in 2013, there is minimum wage of £6.31 per hour for adult over 21 or above. HR and Customs revenues website shows that workers are also entitled to the minimum wage if they are:

part-time

casual labourers, eg someone hired for 1 day

agency workers

workers and home workers paid by the number of items they make

apprentices

trainees, workers on probation

disabled workers

agricultural workers

foreign workers

seafarers

offshore workers

Government has implement policies but many Directors of thousands of companies deceive the government and auditors secretly. They do not allocate any residential, travel or holiday allowances for their employees. They do bad at their best.

Boss empire

Psychological and physical state of these workers and employes are lethargic, anti-social and aggressive. Their personal and family life also get disturbed and in traumas. They need to way-out to their situations and workplaces. They want to contribute for their personal, professional, organisational and societal life. They need new mindset working with different and updated minds and culture. There is good news! Informational or Knowledge age has brought many blessings to the offices and the world itself, given greater contentment and job satisfaction, rich and diverse culture. God has broadened the vision of world Business leaders and human mind to form an Informational or knowledge based worker economy that is growing fastly and being adopted by many emerging organisations. Leadership development for organisations and whole-person paradigm is the subject of today’s world. Hundreds of authors, business gurus, experts and organisations are contributing to fixing wounds of industrial age. Actually, Information or knowledge worker age is opposite of Industrial Age. Industrial age has been broken down on its knee and should not part of this global economy and people lives. We need to make lot of struggle by raising voice and awareness. New system is providing path by empower needs of body, mind, heart and spirit of an individual and also as organisational level.

If you want to share your story where you are working or have experienced this mindset and system, you can share with me on Maratib@MaratibAliShad.com

Many people live not as successful because they have divided life into misaligned different paradigms for personal life, family, office and social work or community. They believe that each of four have different things, settings and aspects of life so behaviors associated should be unlike and smartly. People assume that all roles of life have different descriptions and deals of tackling with different principles. These all are not entirely interconnected and covering different stories of an individual’s life. For example, General Manager Adam quarrels himself because he is unable to manage himself and even Adam does not understand these four roles of life. Adam is being proven very controlling and dis-empowering manager and behaves reactively with his sub-ordinance, in the office. Personally, Adam has weak body, rough communication, distracted mental intelligence and poor spirit of life. Adam has no vision neither personal goals nor mission of life. Being a Manager his severe and hostile behavior is not acceptable for his sub-ordinances and even for his colleagues because of his unprofessional and unethical approach. It is all because of that he has misconception, to always try to be clever with colleague(s), tricky with Senior(s) and believe on Win-Lose or Lose-Lose. On the contrary, Adam has very soft tone and caring behavior towards his family and children. He believes on ‘Think Win-Win’ and passionate family life. No one in his family can believe that he is so unpopular in the office. Now when someone talks with Adam about something for social volunteer or religious works, Adam stops with half No and half yes. In real, Adam does not believe on social contribution and welfare work also. Adam probably is enough backward, to have awareness on importance of social works, without being paid. Because of fault in thinking of Adam, he has divided his sincerity and insincerity into four roles personal, office, family and religious or social life, separately.

Story of Adam is actually chronicle of many people of this information knowledge worker age. The very problem is lack of ‘professionalism is whole life’. Professionalism is not just association with your work. It is an attitude of your whole life and roles that is: personal, office, family and social work or community. An individual should not split personality into four or even more parts with different attitudes. Emerge all four roles with same and uniform attitude. For this, you need to work on paradigms of things, people, life and the world. The meanings and vision which a person has associated with things, people, roles and different settings, are actually the very problems. Like Adam, who was dealing with four roles with different attitude that’s why he lives a mediocre and victim life. Actually, Adam had wrong paradigms. Adam had associated wrong meanings with different roles, things and people that are why he collapsed, although he had very good family life, which was not enough to make him also successful in the office or working with social community or even personal management. Suddenly, a paradigm shift occurred in life of the Adam and his life took U-turn. In next few days, Adam started to manage and understood personal issues and designed goals to resolve issues. Professionally, Adam behaves, now, proactively and with empathy with his juniors. He likes to work as team member and helpful with colleagues. His Seniors appreciate his new innovative ideas. Social contribution has become his passion of life and now Adam has joined and leading as volunteering campaigner for fundraising for a moral cause. Adam found his voice.

Why all this change happened, just because of changing his attitude towards life. Since, he has found his voice; Adam has actually treated all roles of his life equally and with uniform attitude which is voice of professionalism. He has applied this concept of professionalism in all roles. Family, community, personal management and office, all four have is converted into professional. Adam has designed his work, family, personal and community goals as well. His unique spirit and soul has been built on concept of professionalism. For him, professionalism is something to achieving great in all life, by using energies and intelligence(s) of body, mind, heart and spirit.

Like Adam everyone should adopt uniform, unique and one proactive attitude in the life. Our whole life is one attitude, not distorted collection of different disintegrated believes, eyes and moods. I do believe that by working of personal management you can manage other as many roles of your life. Personal management can only heal your stress of life because thoughts of a person define outlook of his or her about roles, relations, things, events and world. This understanding in further generates different behavior and attitude differently, unless you have clear and universal understanding of life, concepts, things and people. Seriously, successful people live uniquely, calculated life and with scheduled approach, not only in job career but also with spouse and kids, friends, key persons and social people.

Professional development is an essential part of office and business life today. All companies and organization are offering their employee the trainings, courses and workshops on this subject. Organizations are spending handsome amount of monies on affording best trainers and coaches. New and fastest growing industry to teach Leadership and personality development are also growing. I know these sorts of trainings are really productivity and also provide forum to understand, share and learn new concepts, trends and innovation. My job career stay of five years in LUMS University really proved to be metaphor, enhancing my professional growth which later influenced my personal, family and religious life. I never try to separate my office life from my family or community life, because I believe firmly that ‘what is professional is very personal for me’. I always try to adopt unchanged attitude with LUMS colleagues, friends, spouse, family and religious and social fellows. This secret is now very open in today’s world also and everyone who wants to live and achieve great life in real terms, is the following principle of uniform and organized life with broad and unique perspectives, not following social mirrors.

Professionalism is also the subject of leadership today. In offices and social life we see many diverse minds having enlarged visions are proved to be leaders unless they follow a specific and essential discipline in the life. Leaders cannot translate their vision into reality unless they do show professionalism. Their character is fruits of ideal attitude for each role of their lives.

Professionalism actually gives security for whole life covering all roles with goals and ambitions. Non-professional people are hardly seeing to accomplish goals of life; never have they designed goals, ironically. I have also interaction with many people in my life which have designed their goals and want to do something good but due to lack of vision of discipline and professional approach, they get fail.

Professionalism is an art to deal all roles of our life. This art is so necessary that I strong recommend including this subject of ‘Professionalism’ as compulsory component of all types of education everywhere in the world. It should teach everywhere because this age of indispensable is also an age of passion of services. Passion of giving services cannot be shown heartedly unless you do it by heart. Sectors like education, hospitality, local town governments, retailers, hospitality, super-markets, public organizations and religious groups all give services to public. Nathan Eldon Tanner put it in this way: “Service is the rent we pay for living in this world of ours”.

Professionalism also gives standard to your body, mind, heart and spirit. Your body should be slim, smart, healthy, composition of positive energy, quick and active, in such a way your body always ready to move on your initiative(s) which is obviously in result of choices you make everyday and every moment of your proactive life. Anything which make one’s body lethargic, sluggish and sources of negative energies, in way of reactive move. Your professional approach will be boosted when you learn books, audio and video stuff and involve yourself to study in related to your field. The best way to enhance your mental intelligence is to put yourself in academia. Engage yourself and learn and apply just. Earn certificate and degrees side by side your job, but with understanding and applying of the contents. Your heart should produce emotional connection with your body and mind in such a way that you influence other people. All social skills, ‘The 7 Habits’ taught by Dr. Stephen R. Covey will be a vital victory in your life including family life. At last your voice of conscience and spirit should be regular feed you like a way you keep yourself stick with your goals, mission and diary management all the time, spiritually. This holy power will be fueled by reading sacred literature, stories and wisdom and it will be proven a driving and most mighty guide to keep you on path of professionalism.

I recommend you to learn habits of ‘be Proactive’, ‘Begin with the end in mind’ and ‘put first thing first’ taught by Dr. Stephen R. Covey in his best book ‘The 7 habits of Highly Effective People’. These three habits will able you to win yourself by yourself and are also called ‘Private Victories’ and Dr. Covey says ‘Private Victories precedes Public Victories’. I also suggest buying a diary and after brain storming of defining roles of life, goals and mission of your whole life, putting timeline each of goals and follow-up regularly. Do act now. Achieve something great as husband, wife, colleague, parent, student, CEO and member of the society by following same attitude with universal paradigms, professionalism and diary management. This is something which makes you very human and unique effective individual. I believe influential organizations, groups and people do believe on broadening perspective of professionalism. They expect from every of his employee to live life with unique and world-class professionalism.